Redneck is his native tongue

Last week a letter was delivered to every household in Medicine Hat and the nearby town of Redcliff. It was written by a local realtor and too good not to share.
Note: all spelling mistakes are copied exactly.

CITIZENS AGAINST MEDICINE HAT POLICE FORCE TERRORISM

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves. We are CAMHPFT standing for Citizens Against Medicine Hat Police Force Terrorism.

It is time we as the general public take a stand and get our Police force back on track because as it stands more of the General Public are afraid of the Police Service and their continued bad actions and are afraid and humiliated by their experience with the Medicine Hat Police Force.

OUR CITY POLICE FORCE IS OUT OF CONTROL:

i. Harassing Ordinary Citizens on a daily basis

ii. Handing out 10's of thousands of dollars worth of photo radar tickets from an illegally parked van

iii. Bulling and Beating our Youths on a daily basis

iv. Bulling and Beating our Average Citizens for no reason

v. Constantly using excessive force for everything from Seat Belt tickets to Speeding

vi. General Harassment of our Citizens

vii. And much much more, what's your story?

This Police Force should be renamed:

"Goons with Guns - Collecting Taxes Violently"

I Often wonder if Ben Laddin trained our Medicine Hat Police Force - Hospitals full of beat children as a direct result of Police Bulling.

We are Asking you the General Public to not be afraid, to come forward, let us know if the Medicine Hat Police Force Humiliated and Abused you?

Do you feel you or anyone in your immediate family has been Humiliated or Abused by the Medicine Hat Police Force?

__ YES

Do you feel there should be a full Public Inquiry into the Medicine Hat Police Actions done by Outsiders, not our local Police Force?

__ YES

From the day you launch your complaint the Police Force has 45 days to investigate the situation, costing nothing to you the Law-Abiding Citizen, but maybe getting the "Goons with Guns" off of our streets restoring Safety to the General Public.

********************

I think if we do sell we should use him as our realtor since he is so obviously intelligent and just so concerned with our Youths and Average Citizens and all the Bulling that is apparently happening.

Not about to quit my day job

Our DVD player broke. We bought it for $30 a year ago so we figure we got our money's worth but it has been highly inconvenient for me during my current O.C. obsession. Since Hugh made me promise I would not inflict this obsession on him I asked him to set up our DVD player and an old tv in our bedroom. As a rule of thumb I am dead against a tv in the bedroom but all normal rules have been suspended for The O.C. Anyway our nightly routine after the kids have gone to bed has been for me to disappear upstairs to watch The O.C. in bed while Hugh takes over the main floor studying for his final apprenticeship exam, playing x-box "when he just can't study anymore" and immersing himself in March Madness basketball which I made Hugh promise not to inflict on me. It was all working perfectly until our DVD player broke.

Technically I could use the xbox and main floor tv to watch The O.C. but that means breaking the first commandment "thou shalt not inflict The O.C. on thy unwilling husband" and seriously cutting into all the "studying" and March Madness watching that he is doing. In the spirit of compromise I pulled out the laptop and cuddled up next to Hugh on the couch to watch a couple of episodes. I thought he should be grateful that I wasn't taking over the main tv and I had headphones on so he wouldn't have to hear it. But apparently silent wasn't quiet enough for him to study and the moving picture kept distracting him and he almost watched for a minute so I was banished back up to our bedroom. After pouting slightly Hugh offered to set the laptop up for me while I changed into my jammies so I didn't have to waste any of my precious O.C. watching time. He grabbed the headphones for me even though I was going to be upstairs and when I protested because how can he possibly hear it when we're separated by an entire floor? he said, "trust me the sound is way better with the headphones." Fine, whatever. I snuggled under my blankets and put on the headphones and as the theme song played I thought the sound really is better with the headphones.

Several hours and three or four episodes later Hugh walked into our bedroom carrying a glass of water. He glanced at me, walked to his side of the bed, put his water glass down, looked back at me again and said "you know those headphones work better when they're plugged in."

a glimmer

I had a good mom day today.

Before I had kids, when I thought of what it would be like to have kids, I imagined myself as a certain kind of mom. I thought I would be creative, spontaneous, fun even. Unfortunately the reality falls somewhat short. For instance last weekend I thought it would be fun and creative of me to dye Easter Eggs with the kids. So I hard boiled a dozen eggs, Googled egg-dyeing and came up with an oh-so-simple yet beautiful idea from Martha Stewart. That right there should have been my first red flag but this was supposed to be completely fool-proof. You mix a tablespoon of oil, a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of food colouring in a glass and then fill the glass with enough water to cover an egg. You dip the egg in, bring it out and voila a beautiful marbleized egg. In theory at least. I just ended up with oily eggs. And a tension headached from yelling at the kids to STOP TOUCHING EVERYTHING! So I fed Sebastian, gave myself a mini timeout, washed off the oily eggs and started over with rubber bands and food colouring mixed with hot water and an apology to the kids for yelling. It ended with 7 eggs and a cocktail.

But today was a good day. I took the kids to Winner's to return sunglasses and browsed through the breakables without anything being broken. Then to celebrate I took the kids to Starbucks for a hot chocolate. While we were there the kids found it highly entertaining to walk things over to the garbage can and drop it in. Bizarre and slightly gross but peaceful so I didn't complain. First they walked over their stir sticks, then they each asked for a "Starbucks napkin", specifying for me in case there were some non-Starbucks napkin options, which they promptly got up to throw in the garbage as soon as I set them down on the table. Then Ava was done her hot chocolate and threw away her cup and then Tristan, who, I'm guessing, was so caught up in the garbage-throwing frenzy threw away his cup even though it was still half full. I closed one eye and braced myself but since he didn't collapse in a puddle of tears and floppy limbs when he realized what he'd done and since this was the first cup of hot chocolate that wasn't drawn like a magnet to Tristan's pants, I didn't even care.
"Where do you think all that garbage went?" I asked the kids.
"Down. Down into the BIG hole," said Ava.
"What do you think is at the bottom of the big hole?
"A fire breathing dragon!" said Tristan.
"Really? A fire breathing dragon? What do you think the fire breathing dragon does down there?"
"Burns up all the garbage!" said Ava.
"And eats it too!" said Tristan. Pause. "Mom, can we see the fire breathing dragon?"
"Can we?" asked Ava.

On just about any other day if you saw me lifting my children and putting them head first over the garbage can you could rightly assume that I was seriously considering stuffing them into it. But today? Today we were looking for fire breathing dragons.

Sort of like Seinfeld

This is basically a blog about nothing.

I have started to write several blogs over the last few weeks, been interrupted and lost my inspiration or, more accurately, forgot what I was going to write about. One had something to do with Ava and bossiness and I was going to to try to be funny and heartwarming all at the same time but danged if I can remember the specifics now. Then I was going to try to emulate DJ with a "blog by the numbers" but could only come up with 2 numbers and now I couldn't tell you what either of them were. Since numbers were proving too diffcult for me (math never was my strong suit) I decided to try a "true or false blog" a la Michelle. Again 2 lines. Again can't for the life of me remember what they were. And so I have nothing. A whole lot of nothing.

Since I haven't been blogging what have I been doing with all my spare time you may wonder. The answer? Nothing. Well that's not technically true I have been watching a lot of tv. Those 3 nights of American Idol each week pre top-12 were getting gruelling. Thank God for the PVR and never having to watch another commercial. I no longer watch anything when it originally airs so that I can watch it later and fastforward the commercials. I think commercial watching is officially against my religion.

Anyway, now that Idol is down to 2 nights I was feeling sort of lost with all my free time so I decided to rent the seasons of The O.C. which has become my new guilty pleasure. Lame I know. Like the balding 40-year-old guy cruising main street in his hot rod with Dance Mix '96 blasting through the open windows. Now The O.C. is no 90210 but dang if I can get that theme song out of my head or stop wondering if Summer will forgive Seth and if Ryan and Marissa are ever going to be able to make it work. Now technically, (spoiler alert), I know that Marissa gets killed off at the beginning of the last season because I saw one episode once, so I know they're a sinking ship no matter what but maybe they'll get to have some happily ever after moments in between all the brooding and before she "moves on to other projects". And there's always Seth and Summer who I'm holding out hope will be the ones that last and be together forever. You know?

So with all this tv watching the blog has been suffering and for that I apologize. Now I'm only just 4 episodes into Season 2 so I can't promise that I will be all that regular in my posting but I will try to resurface every once and a while and let you know that I'm still alive.

Oh and the other thing occupying me these days is we're trying to decide if we should sell our house. We currently live in half of a duplex and we have the opportunity to build again - a fully detached home. Who knew the definition of bliss would include 4 walls completely all your own? We've been looking at a lot and talking to a builder and it's all very exciting but there are a few things we have to work out first before it's a go. Not to put the cart before the horse or anything but in my mind I have already chosen cabinets, flooring, tile, lighting and paint. So if it is a go I have a good idea of what I want and I will post pics of my findings.

If not? Well then we'll just have to wait until the right lot comes up and I will keep dreaming. That is if I can spare any brain activity from The O.C. and all that watching and wondering.